A Catch 22

• The Jacob Scardino Saga
• Saturday Night's Amount, For Tax Purposes: 27 Dollars

In The Dog House

It was about ten minutes past eleven when I got on my bike, thinking that I wouldn't pluck my first note at the Lilly Pad until after midnight.

I don't know why I thought that, given that I once timed the trip from my apartment door to the door of the Quartermaster, where I pick up a milk crate.

I think that turned out to be a 19 minute excursion.

Of course, I had to add the amount of time that it would normally take me to transport that milk crate one pretty long block to the Lilly Pad, and so that would be, I guess, 3 or 4 more minutes.

But, since I was guessing, I never really cemented in my mind an exact figure.

Plus, I had been on my mountain bike, lighter and faster than the Trek Calypso beach cruiser, and had taken the bike trail, an almost as-the-crow-flies path to the Lilly Pad.

The beach cruiser has ten gears and none of them in the direction of the ratios that I want. My pedals are already going a mile a minute when I reach a top end of about 20 miles per hour, why would I ever need to downshift in flat as a pancake New Orleans?

And, my use of the bike trail at night kind of tapered off after I got shot in the side of the face with a paint ball about 3 years ago, now, I think...

Timing the route definitely moved the needle and gave me a better bottom line at the end of the year, because there were plenty of times that I looked at the clock wondering if it was worth it to go to the busking spot and, after having added just 19 minutes to the present time and told myself, maybe even out loud even though I was alone in the apartment: "I could be set up and playing by [insert time that doesn't seem like most of the night is already gone after adding 19 minutes to it]" and went out and had some pretty good nights, I'm sure, to go with the paint ball in the face ones...
But, it's probably still just a half hour of vigorous pedaling...

Maintaining Schedule

I had been trying to keep the same time table in place as I had when I had been running to the Uxi Duxi almost every day. There, I would sit from about sundown to about the time they closed at 10 PM.

This really meant that I would have to make a bee-line for the Lilly Pad, just to be there an hour after my longstanding regular starting time of 9:45 PM, when the piano guy inside Lafitt's Blacksmith Shop Tavern starts to tickle the keys.

And, this was having its effect on the bottom line. It was bad enough when the Uxi Duxi closed at 8 PM, and I would then sit in front of the place and blog longer using their wi-fi, usually writing at some point that I really shouldn't be sitting and blogging about busking when I could be doing it. But the 10 PM closing time was like letting out rope with which I could hang my chances of starting to busk at a decent hour. In this way, being barred from the Uxi Duxi has already been a blessing.

All the tourists seem to make it here; eventually

After having bought kratom at the Herb Shop by the ounce at their location right up the street from the Uxi Duxi, just on the other side of one of the famous commentaries, and gotten kind of a "reading" on them, I returned to Sacred Heart and did a shot of the "Bali" kratom that I had purchased by the ounce (at about 65 cents on the dollar compared to the price of it by the shot at the Uxi) and did my blogging right from the computer lab here.

The connection problem that I had been having has resolved itself, either through one of the automatic updates to the Linux system that I run, or because the system had actually been down the last time I had tried and failed to get online.

The reading that I had gotten from the Herb Shop people was enough to convince me that Den-A, who also owns that place, was behind my banishment from the Uxi Duxi.

It actually crossed my mind that I would be refused service at The Herb Shop, because it is owned by the same people. I was prepared for one of them to tell me that the owner had told them to not let me in there.
"You're the guy that goes to the Uxi Duxi a lot?"
And for any questions as to why this was so to be met with non committal vagaries like "He just said that you're not allowed in here."

It is a shitty thing to tell someone out of the blue that they are unwelcome; and then to give them no clue as to the reason.

The reason that they give no clue is most likely because they don't want to be sued over it for having violated any of the persons rights to the pursuit of happiness.



The lady who rang up my kratom, who is often seen at the Uxi Duxi -a late fifties red haired thin lady whom Jacob said he always thought "pretty hot for an older lady"- did so with her lips pursed in an attitude of "I'm not going to say anything," of the kind that kind of tips off the the person that you're not saying anything to, through its conspicuousness.

What the lips said was that she had heard about the barring and either agreed or disagreed with it, but was not going to take sides. She was keeping mum, quite visibly.

She would have heard about the banishment through the joint owner of the two places, otherwise, the subject of me wouldn't come up during one of her pop-ins at the Uxi Duxi.
She would be yet one more person not part of the "popular consensus" to bar me should she think that it is unwarranted.

After having blogged, and visited Bobby in building C, who gave me some bud, even though I had made a whopping 19 dollars the night before "...I need kitty litter and might have to buy a new nut for my guitar soon..." I rode to the Lilly Pad, experiencing a "gabapentin" pill that I had taken at the behest of Bobby, who said that it would put me in the mood to play.

It put me in the mood to play and I soared through an hour and a half set, during which I was hallucinating all kinds of things, all of them good, like a snake squiggling its way along the fret board that made for like a "follow the squiggly snake" guide to melody, and the lady whom I kept seeing out of the corner of my eye, listening approvingly, who was never there.

Jacob, my little guitar buddy, was caught smoking marijuana by his guardian Bob.
This is grounds, supposedly, for he being kicked out of that house.
There will be no more kratom, and no more trips to Daniel's to jam for Mr. Scardino, who is awaiting further orders.
The last I knew, he was given some kind of ultimatum like, get a job, start paying rent, or hit the road.

Jacob lit up a joint of weed that you can smell throughout the whole floor that Bobby lives on, picking it up as soon as you step off the elevator, inside the house.

Does that sound like a guy who wants to get caught, or what?

Jacob is straddling that fence whereby he thinks, at some level, that what he is doing is wrong, and at some other level that the people who are planting this idea in him are wrong.

It is similar to the story that I wrote here about the time that I would smoke pot and it would expand my mind and make me "aware" spiritually, but then when I would run to a spiritual person like a monk, he would tell me to come back after I had stopped smoking pot.

Pot can be a drug that causes you to have insights that may make you come to the conclusion that you really don't need pot anymore.
These resolutions to quit smoking pot usually have worn off by the time the pot buzz does.

It's a Catch-22.

Jacob has texted me, asking how many days a guest can stay at Sacred Heart.
 
I will note that the last time Jacob left Bob's house, it lasted about 4 hours, before Jacob went back because he was hungry or something...